Chan's book explores the challenges in assessing experiential learning,
deepens our understanding, and inspires readers to think critically
about the purpose of assessment in experiential learning.
Experiential learning has been studied and proven to be effective for
student learning, particularly for the development of holistic
competencies (i.e. 21st century skills, soft skills, transferable
skills) considered essential for individuals to succeed in the
increasingly global and technology-infused 21st century society.
Universities around the world are now actively organising experiential
learning activities or programmes for students to gain enriching and
diversified learning experiences, however the assessment of these
programmes tends to be limited, unclear, and contested.
Assessment plays a central role in education policies and students'
approach to learning. But do educators know how to assess less
traditional learning such as service learning, entrepreneurship,
cross-discipline or cross-cultural projects, internships and student
exchanges? While the current assessment landscape is replete with
assessments that measure knowledge of core content areas such as
mathematics, law, languages, science and social studies, there is a lack
of assessments and research that focus on holistic competencies. How do
we assess students' ability to think critically, problem solve, adapt,
self-manage and collaborate?
Central to the discussion in this book, is the reason students are
assessed and how they should be assessed to bring out their best
learning outcomes. Offering a collection of best assessment practice
employed by teachers around the world, this volume brings together both
theoretical and empirical research that underpins assessment; and
perceptions of different stakeholders - understanding of assessment in
experiential learning from students, teachers, and policymakers. The
idea of assessment literacy also plays an important role in experiential
learning, for example, reflection is often used in assessing students in
experiential learning but how reflection literate are educators, are
they aware of the ethical dilemmas that arise in assessing students?
These questions are discussed in detail. The volume also introduces a
quality assurance programme to recognise student development within
experiential learning programmes.
The book will be particularly informative to academic developers,
teachers, students and community partners who struggle with the
development and assessment for experiential learning, those who plan to
apply for funding in experiential learning, and policymakers and senior
managements seeking evidence and advice on fine-tuning curricular,
assessment designs and quality assurance.
The Open Access version of this book, available at
www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
